Mmmmm... Malevich

A research project on the history of Kazimir Malevich’s ashes burial site in the context of the per-ception of historical avant-garde in Soviet and post-Soviet culture.

This work has been urged by the latest twist in the tortuous history of Malevich’s grave, with the expan-sion of the Romashkovo residential complex directly onto the presumed burial site recently completed. After a moderate public response to these events, a dubious competition for the design of a memorial in honour of the artist was announced, run jointly by the local authorities and Romashkovo developers. Our critical approach to the situation is guided by histori-cal and architectural research and enquiry. Here, we juxtapose the transformation of the burial site from 1935 until the present day with the dynamics of the position that historical avant-garde has occupied in the Soviet and post-Soviet cultural policy and ideology.

When I die, all the artists of the world, and all those who know me, should bury me in Barvikha... And put on my grave a tower in the form of that column, that is in the Tretiakovka... With a watchtower, inside of which a telescope will be placed to watch on Jupiter.

Kazimir Malevich, 1935

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The idea for Malevich’s memorial stone came for the first time to the artist himself in his correspondence and conversations with friends.

On May 15, 1935 Malevich died of cancer in Leningrad. Under the artist’s will, his body was placed in a suprematist coffin and moved to Moscow where it was cre-mated. The funeral urn was buried under an oak tree at the outskirts of Nyemchi-novka. Nikolai Suetin, a fel-low artist and a former stu-dent of Malevich, designed a wooden cube with a black square to mark the burial site. A plaque with a memo-rial inscription “Here lie the ashes of the great artist Kazi-mir Malevich. 1878–1935” was nailed to the oak tree.

During World War II the memorial and the tree were destroyed and the burial site was lost. Its location was rediscovered much later by a group of enthusiasts. Another

memorial to the artist was put up in 1988, a few kilometers away from presumed burial site, since the site itself turned out to be part of a cultivated field.

Today the construction of a new building on the site is nearly complete, as part of the expansion of Romashkovo residential complex. In 2013 the Moscow Region’s Depart-ment of Culture and the devel-opment company that erected Romashkovo jointly announced a competition for a prelimi-nary design of a new memorial in honour of the artist. A small concrete plot at one of the resi-dential courtyards was chosen as the future memorial site. Ground penetrating radar data

General Staff of Armed Forces map of the area, 1939

The memorial sign installed in 1988 near the burial site of Malevich’s

ashes

Kazimir MalevichVertical Architecton

mid 1920sOriginal is not preserved

The first memorial beneath the oak tree

Malevich’s funeral. Front and center is Nikolay Suetin, the author of the first

monument for the artist

The StoryMmmmm... Malevich 2

Topology

Suprematist tower with a telescope

Oak tree and wooden monument

Oak tree uprooted

Collective farm

Concrete monument

(nearby the site)

Constructionof Romashkovo

Romashkovo residental complex

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1935

1914

1960–80е 1988 2013–14 >1941–45

A monument is erected near the presumed burial site, as access to the site itself is

prohibited

The construction of Romashkovo

residential complex on the presumed

burial site

Open announcement of the competition for a preliminary design of Kazimir

Malevich memorial

Search for Malevich’s lost

grave

Installation of a wooden

monument and a memorial plaque

on an oak tree near Malevich’s ashes

burial site

Suprematist periodstarted

Nye

mch

inov

kaR

ussi

a

A radical transformation of the cultural politics in USSR. Dissolution of independent artistic

groups, establishment of artistic unions in 1932. The proclamation of the social realism as a dominant style and an inherent part of the state cultural policy at the First Congress of Soviet

Writers in 1934.

The government policy aims to “bury” historical avant-garde art pieces in the storerooms of provincial museums, or even

destroy them.

The postmodern era of Yury Luzhkov is superseded by

low-quality neo-modernism in Russian architecture.

The interest to historical avant-garde within the Soviet mainstream and

underground culture grows. Valorisation and promotion of the Russian avant-garde

at the global art market.

The oak is uprooted. The

land becomes part of a collective

farm field

Historical ContextMmmmm... Malevich 4

In the beginning of the 20th century Nyemchinovka was a typical Moscow suburb squeezed between the city’s outskirts and the country-side. Malevich used to live and work there since 1909 and was eventually buried nearby. The suburban land-scape, in which the image of houses at the edge of the field emphasizes a clear line of the horizon, became an important element in his work. Sergei Eisenstein described the quite contro-versial nature of this area (no longer a city, but not yet a village) in his short story about visiting Malevich at Nyemchinovka. He wrote: “If you turn your back on the scenery, vast horizons seem to stretch behind you. But if you face it, you will see it was all an illusion and what seemed to be a river bank unexpectedly becomes a slope towards a path over-grown with some trash.”

In the officially approved Soviet art, especially in film, suburbs were shown as being gradually absorbed by the fast-growing city economy. By contrast, the representa-tives of Nonconformist art, such as the members of Lia-nozovo group named after another village near Moscow, pictured the suburbs differ-ently. The suburbs’ position outside, and yet next to, the city limits can be seen as a metaphor for the group’s ambiguous relationship with the official culture.

The idea of leaving the city in order to settle in the no-man’s-land between city and Nature continued to develop in the 1970s. For example, “The Collective Actions” group performed a series of actions called “Trips out of Town” during that period, some of them directly inspired by Malevich’s work. Collective Actions

The Third Variant, 1978

Oskar RabinViolin at the Cemetery, 1969

Context: InbetweenMmmmm... Malevich 5

Context: InbetweenMmmmm... Malevich 6

Visiting the Romashkovo residential complex leaves an uneasy impression. Described on the developers’ website as “the modern interpretation of a traditional urban block development, typical for historic city centers in Europe, [...] situated in a picturesque meadow”, the complex however can also make an impression of a set of pseudo-modernist temporary constructions left in a wasteland.

The UncannyMmmmm... Malevich 7

The UncannyMmmmm... Malevich 8

The UncannyMmmmm... Malevich 9

The construction of a new bulk of the residential complex “Romashkovo” directly on the presumed burial site of Kazimir Malevich’s ashes sparked a media response. In the following months, the Mos-cow Region’s Department of Culture and the develop-ment company that erected “Romashkovo” jointly announced a competition for a preliminary design of a memorial in honour of the artist. A small concrete plot at one of the residential courtyards was chosen as the future memorial site.

Needless to say that Kazimir Malevich has a legitimate cultural value for today’s Russian estab-lishment and real estate. The essence and relevance of such a value however, seems to remain vague to them. This recent comment of Vladimir Putin on the “Black Square” suggests

that the top levels of Rus-sian political elite express a similar attitude: “It’s a kind of philosophical expression of a vision of something.”

The rules of the design competition state that the aims of erecting a Malevich monument at Romashkovo are to “enhance the appeal of the residential complex and foster ideological and patriotic education”. In this motivation, the pragmatic aspirations are blended together with a vague anxi-ety that the proximity of the concreted ashes of an exotic celebrity brings about.

Future memorial site

Title page of the competition regulations

CompetitionMmmmm... Malevich 10

Monument

The winning proposal is a monument, designed by Alexander Rozhnikov, a Honoured Artist of Russian Federation, corresponding member of Russian Academy of Art, as well as the member of the jury of the competi-tion.The press release doesn’t clarify how did the member of the jury became the par-ticipant, and eventually the winner of the competition. However, it explains the win-ning proposal: “The compo-sition comprises of the three main elements: architectural volume, made of geometrical figures, which by its forms vividly symbolize Suprema-tism; a black square, as if protruding open space and the third element – the fig-ure of the artist (Malevich) himself.”

Alexander RozhnikovThe project of the

monument of K. Malevich.Image courtesy Ministry of culture of Moscow Region.

Addendum to the competition regulations

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Sculptor

Selected artworks of Alexander Rozhnikov

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Not intended as a submission to the competition, the pro-posed architectural intervention represents a reflection on the burial site history.

Technically, the new building of the Romashkovo resi-dential complex erected directly on the artists’ grave per-fectly fits the definition of a gravestone: an architectural or sculptural object placed on the burial site. However, memorial gravestones usually bear an inscription. Clos-ing the twisted chain of the grave’s history, we place on the new building’s rooftop the inscription that was once borne by the plaque nailed to an oak tree at this very spot: “Here lie the ashes of the great artist Kazimir Malevich. 1878–1935”.

Here lies...Mmmmm... Malevich 11

Here lies...

“Here lie the ashes of the great artist Kazimir Malevich. 1878–1935”

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